Post Episode Musings: Black Womxn & Vulnerability

Check out the video at the end of this post for more of my reactions to the episode on 'Black Womxn & Vulnerability' which you can listen to in full on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Honestly, the title of this episode still strikes me as somewhat dissonant: Black womxn and what now? Vulnerability and Black womxn side by side just sounds, I don't know, odd? Trust me, I totally acknowledge the fucked-upedness of that observation.

I wanted to explore the topic of Black womxn and vulnerability because I think that, in many ways, our treatment ultimately boils down to this perceived dissonance, this dominant idea that vulnerability is antithetical to Black womxn. I was also really interested to explore how this social expectation has been so internalized by us to the extent that it has contributed to our own self-imposed invulnerability and made it challenging for some of us to allow ourselves our own humanity.

The studies out there all pretty much point to the fact that the 'Strong Black Womxn' stereotype is a double-edged sword—while it is a required shield to confront the system of white supremacy, it also results in an inevitable disabling of our natural, human emotions and feelings. You have to wonder what begins to happen to you, just from a basic wellbeing standpoint, when you've been compelled to repress natural emotional reactions over and over again. Do you begin to forget what they actually feel like? While many Black womxn will agree that cultivating and upholding the 'Strong Black Womxn' demeanor is born of necessity, my concern is that, for some of us, we've become incapable (to some degree) of turning it off. It feels like we've been so programmed that it's just a default setting—we put on the armor even when it isn't needed, even when we're not being confronted with the systemic racism for which this resilience superpower was passed down to us. The shield is always up. In my discussion with Dina, I share my own personal struggles with vulnerability and how leaning into it in the privacy of my own home, in my intimate relationships, in my relationships with family and friends feels...impossible? When confronted with difficult situations or topics that would necessarily illicit feelings of sadness, disappointment etc. in any human being, for some reason, instead of giving into the natural human urges to cry, scream, curl up in the fetal position, ask for a hug, ask for help, I decide instead to be strong and "push through". And my worry is: when does the release actually happen? It's like we're in perpetual fight mode even when we don't need to be.

Black womxn still aren't acknowledged in their full humanity. Even though it's 2023, the perception and treatment of Black womxn as not needing care, emotional support etc., is just a continuation of the dominant narrative of Black womxn as inhuman—a narrative that justified our enslavement, our colonization, our rape (actually, Black womxn were seen as so below the level of human that colonizers and slavers decided raping a Black womxn was an impossibility). I see a lot of parallels between this inhuman perception of black womxn concocted during slavery, and the way we are perceived and treated today in white-dominated workplaces; the different standards/expectations for Black womxn versus white womxn—the way we're not allowed to make mistakes, the way we're not expected to complain that we need a break or that something is just really challenging, the way that we're not at all allowed or expected to express any sort of human emotionality that is not aligned with the stoicism of the 'Strong Black Womxn' or the violence and aggression of the 'Angry Black Womxn'—all things that would convey weakness, a chink in the armor, a defect because ,as Dina points out, those become weaponized against us.

When you think of all the various performances we have to put on as Black womxn, can you imagine the exhaustion? But then consider that, in true 'Strong Black Womxn’ form, we won't even allow ourselves to give into the exhaustion and just retreat and rest. I cannot count the number of times I've needed to draw on that strength and resiliency to face racially toxic workplaces, and social environments—but at what cost? There seems to never be a break from the strength. When are we ever allowed to be, as Dina put it, "soft"? Not surprisingly, that word immediately brings up a feeling of discomfort in me.